This essay isn’t being written from a beachside towel line or from the opposite bank, where someone hands you a towel and asks how it felt. I’m writing this while I’m still in the middle of crossing, my arms tired, the current pulling at me, unable to see which direction will take me to land. This essay is exactly that. It’s not a triumphant tale. It’s not a lesson learned. It’s not a story told by someone who “made it.”
I’ve read a lot of survivor memoirs. Stacks of them. I know why some people write memoirs, and I don’t begrudge anyone their honesty. Survivor memoirs usually follow an arc, with a beginning, middle, and end. Because there is an ending, there must be a conclusion. The diagnosis arrives, the darkness intensifies, the author finds courage, and the author eventually looks back from safe ground. The reader closes the book feeling relieved.
I know that feeling. But I also know that I can’t offer it to you. I don’t have an ending. I have a Tuesday.
And Tuesdays have a flavor. No one warned me about that. A Tuesday with no news has a metallic taste and is filled with held breath. The phone doesn’t ring, and that silence isn’t peaceful. It’s a question. You wash a cup and think about washing another. You laugh at something small, then feel guilty for laughing, and then feel grateful that you laughed.
Uncertainty has a texture. One side feels rough, while the other feels unexpectedly soft. You quickly learn to run your thumb along both sides. Once someone reaches safety, those details fade. Memory sands them down. Relief changes them. Fear becomes a chapter title when you look back, but from here, it’s just Tuesday afternoon, and it is still happening.
The craft problem of writing without an ending is the same as the problem of living without one. How do you create something when you can’t promise your readers closure? How do you create a life under those conditions?
One answer is to build both around what is true today. Write down the scan results, the argument with your fear, the good coffee, the bad night. Trust your reader to enter through an open door without a sign telling them where it leads. I don’t connect every dot. I stop when the day ends and start again in the morning. Some sentences will trail away. Some won’t reach their mark. I leave them standing because the most honest thing I can offer is something unfinished. Pretending otherwise would make me a liar in the one place where I refuse to lie.
Who am I writing for? Someone who is about a month behind me on the same path. Maybe you.
You sit in a parked car with the engine turned off, reading everything you can find. Every page tells you the same thing: It got better. I’m fine now. Here’s what I learned.
You trust those writers. At least part of you believes them. But you also feel alone because you aren’t fine yet, and none of those writers admit that they once felt this way too.
I want you to hear this clearly: Being incomplete isn’t a failure. You don’t have to feel courageous. You only have to take the next step. I won’t give you directions or a map. I can only describe what the water feels like from where I am.
I need your help, too. I won’t deny it. I don’t write from a place of strength. I write from the same cold water where you are swimming. When someone a few strokes behind me says that my words helped them feel less alone, those words help keep me upright. Your stories hold me up just as mine may help hold you.
We aren’t a hero and victim pair. We are two people passing a rope back and forth, each pulling on it, each holding on.
I don’t know where the far shore lies. I don’t know when I’ll set foot on it. I don’t know if I’ll ever reach it. That is probably the hardest truth in this essay. I wrote it slowly, and I won’t lessen its meaning.
Some nights, fear gets the best of me. Some mornings, hope helps me find my footing again. Neither one stays forever. What remains is smaller but steady. I know the water. I know my breath. I know that someone a month behind me may read these words in a parked car. That gives me enough reason to write another sentence tomorrow.
So I continue to write. I continue to breathe. I continue to reach for the next stroke, then the next, then the next.
Not on shore. Not drowning. Not sure. Not alone.
Still swimming. Still here.
